Dangerous Baggage
Rev. Res Spears
Beyond the Cross: Jesus’ Prayer for You and Me • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Annette and I will be going away on vacation in May. Yes, I know you’ll miss her.
Anyway, I’ve already started stressing over the trip. Well, not so much stressing over the trip as stressing over the packing BEFORE the trip.
You see, as with so many things in life, Annette and I have opposing ideas about how to pack for a trip.
I know I’ve talked about this before, but please indulge me, as I want to talk today about how some of the baggage we carry as followers of Jesus interferes with our fellowship with God and causes disunity in the Church.
Now, Annette would prefer to get on the plane with one small carryon bag and never look back.
I, on the other hand, prefer to take as many bags as necessary to make sure we have everything we need, even if that means we have to check luggage.
I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve arrived at our vacation destination and begun to make plans for what to do, only to find out she didn’t bring the right shoes for that.
So, in the days before we travel anywhere, there’s usually a conversation that goes something like this.
“Honey, do you think we could fit everything in this bag?” she’ll ask as she holds up something about the size of a grocery bag.
“Well, no,” I’ll respond. “I have to take my CPAP machine, and you need to be sure to bring whatever shoes you might need. I can barely fit a pair of jeans in that bag.”
“But I don’t want to have to check a bag and wait for it on the other side,” she’ll reply. “And I don’t want to have to haul a bunch of heavy luggage through the airport.”
And then, we rinse and repeat for however many days there are until we leave.
Now, let me be clear: I’m right in my desire to make sure we have everything we need when we’re going somewhere.
But Annette isn’t wrong. Having to head over to the luggage carousel and wait for suitcases delays us from getting to wherever we’re headed. And luggage sometimes gets lost, which makes for a stressful start to any trip.
Baggage may be a minor problem in the scheme of things you’ll encounter when you’re traveling. But it IS a problem.
And for the follower of Jesus, there’s a particular kind of baggage that can cause significant problems — for yourself, for your fellowship with God, for the mission upon which we’ve been sent, and for unity in the Church.
This dangerous baggage is your identity, the things about yourself that you consider to define who you are.
Today, we’re continuing our study of Jesus’ prayer for His followers in John, chapter 17.
And we’re going to see that for Jesus-followers, our identity in Christ is the necessary carryon bag, and all the other ways we define ourselves are the extra suitcases we need to leave behind.
We’re going to see that our position “in Christ” is what makes fellowship with God possible. That it’s the foundation upon which Church unity is built. And that it’s directly connected to unity within the Trinitarian godhead.
You’ll recall that Jesus prayed this prayer at the conclusion of the Last Supper. He’d spent much of this evening teaching them some of His most important lessons.
He’d washed their feet to show them they needed to serve one another. He’d shown Judas the betrayer love, reminding them that He’d taught them to love their enemies and pray for those who’d persecute them.
He’d instituted the practice of the Lord’s Supper as a perennial reminder of what He was about to do for them and for us.
And then, demonstrating His great love and concern for them and for those who’d come to faith through their witness, He prayed for them and for us.
You’ll recall that He started this prayer, asking that God would glorify Him so HE could glorify God. He prayed that God would keep the disciples loyal to Jesus, despite the pressures they’d feel to turn from Him.
He prayed that they’d have joy, even in the midst of this world’s brokenness. And He prayed that they’d be grounded in the truth of God’s word.
And all of those prayer requests were primarily and quite appropriately for the benefit of the 11 disciples who remained in that Upper Room that evening.
But today, we’re going to see Jesus shift His gaze to the future. We’re going to see Him look ahead and anticipate the success of the mission He was giving His disciples.
Today, we’re going to see Jesus praying for US, for we who’ve come to faith in Him through the testimony of the men in that room that evening.
Let’s look at this passage together now, and then we’ll unpack some of the baggage it points to.
20 “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word;
21 that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.
22 “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one;
23 I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.
Here, we finally find ourselves in the Book of John. And what I find encouraging about this verse is the confidence of Jesus.
He’s confident that His disciples would follow their calling to tell others about Him. And He’s also confident that their witness would be effective — that people would come to faith in Him because of their testimony about Him.
Indeed, we should probably see the effectiveness of their witness as a fulfilled prophecy. Speaking through the prophet Isaiah, God had said, more than 700 years earlier:
10 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
11 So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.
And what’s especially neat to me about this prophecy is its twofold fulfillment.
The words Jesus had spoken to His disciples had been effective in drawing them into a relationship of faith in Him.
Similarly, the Spirit-inspired words they would share — especially those recorded in the New Testament — have been effective in drawing many millions to faith in Christ.
But back at the beginning of this Gospel account, the Apostle John also presents Jesus as the living Word of God.
He is the incarnate Word, sent into the world to show us the nature of God. He’s the spotless Lamb of God, sent to give Himself as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. He’s the heavenly mediator, sent to offer reconciliation between God and fallen mankind.
And just as Isaiah prophesied, Jesus accomplished exactly what He’d been sent to do.
As the rain and snow provide water to the earth and cause new life to form, Jesus pours out the Water of Life upon mankind and brings true life to all those who turn to Him in faith.
And so, Jesus understood that His work on earth was nearly complete. He knew God would bring the increase for the seeds that had been planted and watered during His ministry.
And so, He was confident that many would come to faith in Him through the witness of His disciples.
But He also understood that as the message of the gospel spread, it would begin to take root across a variety of cultures.
And He knew that conflict and disunity could result, especially when believers place greater emphasis on their worldly identities, rather than their identity in Christ.
So, in verse 21, He prays again for unity among believers.
“This unity rests on adherence to God’s truth, and it reflects the unity that exists between the Father and the Son. Furthermore it is union with the Father and the Son.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Jn 17:21.]
We don’t talk a lot about the eternal relationship among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But this verse gives us a peek into this great mystery.
The Trinity is a hard thing for us to understand, largely because we’re not God.
We don’t have a frame of reference to help us wrap our minds around the idea that each distinctive Person of the Trinity indwells the others. And even our religious language sometimes confuses things.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each distinct Persons, and each of them is fully God, although we tend to us the name, “God,” to refer to the Father.
But each of the three persons indwells each of the others. Each has all the knowledge and understanding and experience of the others. Each has perfect love for the others.
And all are in complete unity with one another. There has never been a time — and there never will be one — when the Persons of the godhead were in conflict.
And that’s the kind of relationship Jesus prays here for us to have, not just with one another, but also with our Trinitarian God.
He’s praying for we who’ve followed Him in faith to have perfect, self-denying love for one another. He’s praying that we’d have a shared faith in Him, a shared identity as the body of Christ, and a shared purpose to go and make disciples.
But Jesus also prays that we’ll be one with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In other words, He’s praying that we’d share God’s priorities, His values, and His love.
And while we might (and certainly SHOULD) appreciate the blessings we experience as a result of this kind of unity, it’s not about us.
Look what Jesus says is the purpose of this unity at the end of verse 22: “That the world may believe that You sent Me.”
Our unity — our oneness — points people to Jesus!
And that shouldn’t be a surprise, considering all the things that divide people in this world.
National borders divide us physically. Politics divides us philosophically. Culture divides us socially. Economic policies divide us financially.
And then, as if there’s not already enough division in the world, we choose trivial things to further divide ourselves from others. What make of car you drive. What kind of computer you use. Which sports team you support. Which fast food restaurant is the best.
And in each case, the division comes not so much because we disagree about those things, but because we invest our identity in them.
We don’t just VOTE for Democrats or Republicans; we use the terms to describe ourselves and then internalize the description to a degree that causes us to feel personally attacked when others disagree with us.
Or, to take another example that plagues the American church these days, we allow our American citizenship to shape our Christianity, rather than allowing our walk with Jesus to shape how we live as American citizens.
But when we embrace our identity in Christ as He’s revealed in Scripture and allow that identity to shape all the other parts of our lives, the unity that results among believers becomes something the world can’t ignore.
Listen, folks. Jesus taught us to pray for God’s kingdom to come and for His will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven.”
We who’ve turned to Jesus in faith will surely experience this perfect unity when we get to heaven. We’ll all still be different individuals, but what will be important is our shared identity in Christ, not our petty differences.
So, if that’s what heaven’s going to be like, and if we truly believe our calling is to display the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven, then we need to be sure our identity in Christ is the one we’re carrying around.
This is part of what it means to die to yourself. All these other identities can come between us and God if we insist on making them important in our lives. They can inhibit our fellowship with Him. They can divide the church. And they can ruin our witness to the world.
And it’s hard to let some of them go. The culture and the political climate and our education and upbringing all try to demand that we define ourselves according to their terms.
But we’ve been given a tool that can help us cling to the only identity that truly matters, a tool that will help us as we pursue unity in the Church and unity with God.
As Jesus says here and in the next verse, it’s because we have God’s word — His written word and His incarnate Word — that we can have this unity.
Jesus says in verse 22 that He’s given us God’s glory to encourage oneness among believers. And here, I think the glory He refers to is the full knowledge of God that is revealed to us through Jesus’ life and through the Bible.
“When believers understand and believe the revelation of God that Jesus brought, they become partakers of that glory.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Jn 17:22.]
And as we partake in the glory of our Trinitarian God, we can’t help but reflect the glory of His oneness. We can’t help but reflect the mutual love that has eternally characterized the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And, as we see in verse 23, “The display of mutual love among Jesus’ disciples shows that they are His disciples. Their love for one another shows that they really do follow His teachings and possess His life. This gives evidence that Jesus really was who He claimed to be. It vindicates His teaching and so glorifies Him.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Jn 17:21.]
Indeed, this unity is evidence of God’s love for us. That He wants us to have peace, rather than conflict. That He wants us to be part of His Trinitarian community.
But it all starts with identity. What is it that defines you?
If you’re a follower of Jesus, then your politics, your nationality, your race, your sexuality, your financial portfolio, your family situation — none of these things define you anymore. You’re now defined by your position in Christ.
Which means we need to hold all these other identities loosely. None of them will matter a bit when you get to heaven, anyway.
What will matter there is one thing: whether or not you are in Christ by virtue of having turned to Him in faith.
So, this week, I want to encourage you to think of yourself differently than you might ever have done.
This week, I want to encourage you to make a concerted effort to think of yourself not in terms of all the identities the world considers important.
Rather, begin thinking of yourself, first and foremost, as a child of God. Indeed, I want you to think of yourself as ONE with God in Christ Jesus.
And as you take hold of THAT identity — as your experience of oneness with God grows as you walk by the Spirit, you’ll find that all those other identities begin to matter less and less.
And you’ll find that pursuing unity of love, unity of faith, and unity of purpose becomes easier, because you’ve left behind the unnecessary baggage of worldly identity that was weighing you down.
You’re not going to need those bags in heaven. Why not set them aside right now?
